Department of Health Policy & Management, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2022 Jan 11;24(1):e28323. doi: 10.2196/28323.
Appointment management in the outpatient setting is important for health care organizations, as waits and delays lead to poor outcomes. Automated patient self-scheduling of outpatient appointments has demonstrable advantages in the form of patients' arrival rates, labor savings, patient satisfaction, and more. Despite evidence of the potential benefits of self-scheduling, the organizational uptake of self-scheduling in health care has been limited.
The objective of this scoping review is to identify and to catalog existing evidence of the barriers to and facilitators of self-scheduling for health care organizations.
A scoping review was conducted by searching 4 databases (PubMed, CINAHL, Business Source Ultimate, and Scopus) and systematically reviewing peer-reviewed studies. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research was used to catalog the studies.
In total, 30 full-text articles were included in this review. The results demonstrated that self-scheduling initiatives have increased over time, indicating the broadening appeal of self-scheduling. The body of literature regarding intervention characteristics is appreciable. Outer setting factors, including national policy, competition, and the response to patients' needs and technology access, have played an increasing role in influencing implementation over time. Self-scheduling, compared with using the telephone to schedule an appointment, was most often cited as a relative advantage. Scholarly pursuit lacked recommendations related to the framework's inner setting, characteristics of individuals, and processes as determinants of implementation. Future discoveries regarding these Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research domains may help detect, categorize, and appreciate organizational-level barriers to and facilitators of self-scheduling to advance knowledge regarding this solution.
This scoping review cataloged evidence of the existence, advantages, and intervention characteristics of patient self-scheduling. Automated self-scheduling may offer a solution to health care organizations striving to positively affect access. Gaps in knowledge regarding the uptake of self-scheduling by health care organizations were identified to inform future research.
门诊预约管理对于医疗机构而言非常重要，因为等待和延迟会导致不良后果。患者自行预约门诊预约具有明显的优势，包括患者就诊率、节省劳动力、提高患者满意度等。尽管有证据表明自我调度具有潜在的好处，但医疗机构对自我调度的采用一直受到限制。
本综述旨在确定并分类现有关于医疗机构自我调度障碍和促进因素的证据。
通过搜索 4 个数据库（PubMed、CINAHL、Business Source Ultimate 和 Scopus）并系统地审查同行评议研究，进行了范围综述。使用实施研究综合框架来对研究进行分类。
共有 30 篇全文文章纳入了本次综述。结果表明，自我调度计划随着时间的推移而增加，表明自我调度的吸引力越来越大。关于干预措施特征的文献数量可观。外部环境因素，包括国家政策、竞争以及对患者需求和技术获取的响应，随着时间的推移在影响实施方面发挥了越来越重要的作用。与通过电话预约相比，自我调度通常被认为是一个相对优势。学术研究缺乏关于框架内部环境、个体特征以及作为实施决定因素的流程的建议。未来对这些实施研究综合框架领域的发现可能有助于发现、分类和理解医疗机构自我调度的障碍和促进因素，从而推进对该解决方案的认识。
本综述对患者自我调度的存在、优势和干预措施特征进行了分类。自动自我调度可能为医疗机构提供一种解决方案，以积极影响就诊机会。确定了医疗机构采用自我调度的知识空白，以为未来的研究提供信息。
